Conventional approaches to application performance analysis assume static values for latency and bandwidth, based on known values. The known values may be utilized to estimate the effect of a subject network on traffic generated by a particular application. However, in many situations, latency and available bandwidth are variable over time, and these variations may cause performance problems for applications. In order to determine whether latency and bandwidth are negatively impacting the performance of an application, an analyst preferably requires exact knowledge of packet behavior on the subject network. By simply capturing packet traces at various locations on the subject network along a network traffic route, an analyst may be able to ascertain that delays are occurring. However, the simple identification of a delay does not provide sufficient information regarding the cause of the delay. For example, an analyst is not readily able to ascertain whether the delay is being caused by a client, a server, or the network device.